---
title: Updates distribution during development
sidebar_title: Distribution during development
description: Learn how to iterate faster with EAS Update during the development phase.
hideTOC: true
---

EAS Update helps us fix critical bugs in production. It can also help us iterate faster with our team during development.

## Distributing updates to others during development

Whether a new feature is being developed, stabilized, QA'd, or critiqued, it's often useful to allow others to preview what it looks and feels like before it is released to production.

Traditionally previewing meant re-building the project and distributing it to a reviewer manually. Previewing features with EAS Update removes the need for rebuilding in most cases and can help us preview new features quicker.

A published update can be loaded in various environments:

- A [development build](/eas-update/expo-dev-client/) with a matching runtime version, distributed through [internal distribution](/build/internal-distribution/) or as an emulator or simulator build.
- A release build distributed via Google Play beta, TestFlight, or [internal distribution](/build/internal-distribution/) with a matching runtime version and channel pointing to a branch with the published update. With this strategy, often an EAS Update channel like "alpha" or "beta" will be used, and builds and updates will be created from development branches in source control.
- Expo Go can also load published updates in cases where custom native code is not used.
